But Quintana was not alone in serving as model to the lost colonies; others, the fiery Gallego, and Moratin, the author of delightful comedies; a critic, Alberto Lista; Melendez, Cienfugos, and Martinez de la Rosa, cultivators of a correct, elegant, and frigid form, were also imitated, and the imitators could not free themselves from their impoverished classicism. Olmedo (1780) and Bello (1781) were both masters of metre, taste, and harmony. It is not easy in their case to separate the politician from the artist, they themselves considering their art to be a high republican function; Olmedo counsels federation in his _Canto à Junin_, and José Eusebio Caro attacks the tyrant Lopez in a poem upon liberty, while Felipe Pardo writes political satires. Of the American democracies he says:
"Zar de tres tintas, indio, bianco y negro, Que rige el continente americano Y que se llama Pueblo Soberano."[2]
Towards 1840 classicism gave way to romanticism. The Revolution, the protest of individualism against the Spanish rule, disdained the old literary canons, having first condemned the old political system. The poets, still numerous, sought models in Spain. Arolas, Espronceda; Zorilla, the Duke de Rivas; and in France, Victor Hugo, de Musset, and Lamartine. Byron, too, had his disciples. All were romantic in life and work, pilgrims _à la_ Childe Harold, who described _Châtiments_ and were persecuted for liberty. Disorderly, imperfect, dominated by an inward dæmon who produced a continual exaltation, they portrayed the constant restlessness of their spirits. { 253} Romanticism in Europe was the triumph of the individual, of liberty, the lyrical poetry of confessions--the melancholy of René or the satanic pride of Manfred--the revenge, in short, of sentiment against reason. In art this stood for liberty, the cult of the exotic, the return to nature, the Gothic restoration, and war upon classic conventions.
Which among these elements could give the new generation in South America that enthusiasm which might evoke a romantic state of mind? Certainly not the national antiquities, remote and misunderstood. Although a few poets wrote _Orientales_ without much sincerity, none sought to renew his lyrical gifts in the Aztec or Quechua traditions. But this imitation of the tendencies of French and Spanish letters was assisted by the lack of discipline found in the American character, which was more attracted by idealism and sentiment than by classic rigidity or reason. All things favoured romanticism; the political conflicts and the anarchy of the time formed Byronic heroes; tropical passion found its food in the sentimentalism of Lamartine and the ardour of De Musset, while the individual was developed by struggling against the tyrants. In the uncertain and barbaric life of these young democracies there was a confusion of _rôles_; the poet became the _vates_, the leader of the crowd, only to feel himself exiled among mediocrities, the victim of illiterates. Melancholy, exasperated individualism, the high mission of the poet, and solitude--these are romantic elements which are reflected in American literature.